Remains of an Altar

Made sense. On that basis, if he shot the pictures this morning, he could have it laid out by late tonight, email her a copy for approval and by this time tomorrow they’d be up and running: the full horror of Coleman’s Meadow disclosed to the world before the weekend. Scores of people – possibly hundreds of people – lodging complaints with Hereford Council. Hundreds of New Age cranks and old hippies telling them exactly where they could put their acceptable infill.

Eirion stood watching her, keeping his distance.

‘What?’ Jane said

‘You clenched your fists. You looked positively homicidal. What have I said now?’

‘Irene, it’s not—’

Jane shook herself. Oh hell. To fit in this shoot, he must’ve been up at five, driving over from Abergavenny about ninety minutes earlier than usual. Face it: how many other guys would do that for you? She felt totally messed up again, her emotions all over the place, hormones in flood. For a moment she felt she just wanted to take him into a corner of the still-dewy meadow and…

… What would it be like making love on a ley? What kind of extra buzz would that produce?

What it would produce would be a golden memory.

‘Jane, are you all right? I mean you’re not ill … ?’

‘Sure. I mean, I’m fine.’

Jane clasped her hands together, driving back the tears. It was no use, she had a battle to fight, against slimy Lyndon Pierce and the chino guys and lofty, patronizing Cliff and the thin woman from Education. The mindless, philistine Establishment.

She sniffed and stepped out from behind the tree and walked back on to the ley, her head lowered.

‘How do you want me to stand?’

‘You’re perfect the way you are.’ Eirion smiled his glowingly honest, unstaged Eirion smile. ‘Just don’t look at me.’

Sophie displaying emotion was a rare phenomenon. When it happened it tended to be minimal: slender smiles, never a belly laugh. Disapproval, rather than…

‘Merrily, that is quite disgusting. It dishonours him.’

Sophie was looking out of the gatehouse window, towards the Cathedral green. There might even have been tears in her eyes.

‘It dishonours all of us.’

It was like you’d vandalized a grave. Spray-painted the headstone, trampled the flowers.

‘He lived in this city for nine years, at the height of his fame. Even after he’d left, he’d come back for the Three Choirs Festival, when it was held here … as it is this year.’

Sophie swung round, her soft white hair close to disarrangement.

‘Do you really want to besmirch that, Merrily?’

‘Me?’

‘I’m sorry, but this is giving credibility to something very sordid.’

She meant the road accidents. Merrily hadn’t even mentioned Hannah Bradley. Just as well, really.

‘Involving the Church in a campaign which might be laudable in itself but is extremely questionable in its execution is … I realize it’s not your fault, but you can stop it going any further.’

‘I didn’t expect you to be quite so … protective?’

‘I’m a former Cathedral chorister, I’m proud of my county’s link with Elgar. His homes at Birchwood and then here in the city. His many connections and friendships at the Cathedral—’

‘I know.’

Embarrassed by her ignorance, Merrily had picked up a slim guide to Elgar’s Herefordshire, skimming through it before Sophie came in. It was a start.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Sophie said. ‘May one ask?’

‘Well, with your help, as an Elgar enthusiast and a Cathedral chorister for … how many years … ?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘… I want to look at it sensibly. Because whatever your misgivings about the idea of Elgar’s ghost, my instinct is that there is something.’

Sophie scowled.

‘Please? I’ve a christening this afternoon, and then I’m supposed to go to this parish meeting. Or not.’

Sophie went to sit at her own desk, waved a limp hand.

‘Go on…’

‘I need to know enough to be able to discount crap, but I have to be prepared for the possibility of it not being crap. Which would leave two options: an imprint or what Huw Owen would describe as an insomniac.’

‘A restless spirit.’

‘In this case, an angry spirit, disturbed – much as you are – over the invasion of the Malverns by the hoodies and bling element. Which is a potentially sensitive issue because of … well…’

‘Racism. Always the weapon used against us. As if appalling behaviour and criminal acts should be protected for so-called cultural reasons.’

‘Lol reckons that, with Elgar, it wasn’t so much political patriotism as a pure love of the countryside – the landscape itself. That in fact he even developed a bit of a distaste for “Land of Hope and Glory”? That true?’

‘I suppose he had misgivings about the jingoism in the words. He was a lifelong Conservative, however, Merrily, never forget that.’

‘Although, unless I’m wrong –’ Merrily remembering something else from Elgar – A Hereford Guide ‘– a good friend of lifelong socialist George Bernard Shaw?’

‘No, you’re not wrong,’ Sophie said, maybe through her teeth. ‘What point are you making?’

‘Just trying to form an opinion on whether, in theory, the raging essence of Edward Elgar might be summoned, like King Arthur from his cave, by a blast of trip-hop over his sacred hills. If something’s happening, then something must have set it off.’

‘You don’t believe that for one minute.’

‘Open mind, Sophie. It’s what this job’s about.’

‘And what’s the alternative?’

‘The alternative, if we’re accepting the possibility of a paranormal element, is an imprint. Spicer says Elgar used to bike through Wychehill, maybe stopping for a pint of cider at the Royal Oak.’

‘Possibly when he was exploring the location of his cantata Caractacus, in the 1890s. Its main setting is Herefordshire Beacon.’

‘It’s about the last stand of the Celts against the Romans?’

‘A legend now discredited. The final defeat of Caractacus was probably not, as once suggested, on the Beacon. Which wouldn’t have bothered Elgar too much. He simply loved the drama of it and … was fascinated, I’m afraid, by Druid ritual. Blood-sacrifices and prophecies in the oak groves.’

‘I should listen to it.’

‘Yes, you should, but you’ll find it essentially a patriotic work dedicated to Queen Victoria. Ending with what I expect you would call an imperialist rant – the British might have been defeated this time but would rise again, with an empire greater than Rome’s.’

‘I expect it was … of its time. And presumably – again – he didn’t write the words?’

‘Elgar told his publisher that he’d suggested the librettist should dabble in patriotism, but didn’t expect the man to “get naked and wallow in it.”’

Merrily smiled.

‘Actually,’ Sophie said, ‘thinking about this, his cycling phase might have begun later, although it certainly started at Birchwood. Possibly while he was completing his masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius.’

‘That’s not set in the Malverns, though, is it?’

‘Merrily, your ignorance of great music astonishes me. It’s set in the afterlife.’